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Doubleday
May 2008
On Sale: May 12, 2008
320 pages
ISBN: 0385518455
EAN: 9780385518451
Hardcover
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Fiction
From the acclaimed author of The Epicure's Lament, a novel
of literary rivalry in which two competing biographers
collide in their quest for the truth about a great artist. Oscar Feldman, the "Great Man," was a New York city painter
of the heroic generation of the forties and fifties. But
instead of the abstract canvases of the Pollocks and
Rothkos, he stubbornly hewed to painting one subject—the
female nude. When he died in 2001, he left behind a wife,
Abigail, an autistic son, and a sister, Maxine, herself a
notable abstract painter—all duly noted in the New York
Times obituary. What no one knows is that Oscar Feldman led an entirely
separate life in Brooklyn with his longtime mistress, Teddy
St. Cloud, and their twin daughters. As the incorrigibly
bohemian Teddy puts it, "He couldn't live without a woman
around. It was like water to a plant for him." Now two
rival biographers, book contracts in hand, are circling
around Feldman's life story, and each of these three women—
Abigail, Maxine, and Teddy—will have a chance to tell the
truth as they experienced it. The Great Man is a scintillating comedy of life among the
avant-garde—of the untidy truths, needy egos, and jostlings
for position behind the glossy facade of artistic
greatness. Not a pretty picture—but a provocative and
entertaining one that incarnates the take-no-prisoners
satirical spirit of Dawn Powell and Mary McCarthy.
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